Yo, the comments are appreciated! Next part's well on its way :p

Day 1, Part 1

The room was certifiably a war zone. Cupcakes were everywhere, chocolate and blueberries and who knew what else smashed onto the sparkling floor and making themselves visible in smudged curtains and sheets. "Ack," Hawkstar said.

Kauri grinned innocently, though really no one was about to forget who started all this. "Ha, how about we explore the palace?"

"Yeah, right," Oro said with a frown. "Before they throw us out of the palace for doing something like this."

"We couldn't help it," Dragonfly protested. "It was an accident. Maybe we could blame the cat?"

"We could not blame the cat," rainswept said indignantly.

Kauri was suddenly engulfed in a Crescent hug, which were always really the best in the world. "I'm just so glad you're alright," she whispered so that only the two of them could hear. "I was afraid that something had happened."

"Hey, Crescent, it's fine. I'm here," Kauri said, hugging her back. "I honestly feel like we're safe here anyway."

"So, palace?" Rigel suggested. "Now that I've won the cupcake war?"

"Now that you've..." rainswept shook her head. "So you think."

"But does anyone really win a cupcake war?" Crescent asked. "Isn't it just cupcakes for the sake of cupcakes?"

Still discussing heatedly, they spilled out into the hallway. They had barely gotten going when Oro remembered that he'd left his cloak on Hawkstar's bed. He hesitated, then turned and slipped back to the bedroom, cringing inwardly as he thought of the mess of cupcakes that were waiting inside.

He opened the door. The room gleamed back at him, sparkling and impeccable, every surface perfectly clean. But we barely left a few seconds ago, Oro thought. And yet, in those seconds, this had happened? He picked up his cloak and rejoined the others, thoughts swirling in a whirlpool of questions. Something was up with this palace. Something was definitely up with this palace.

---

The library was... This was probably where language became completely meaningless. It was a portal, a border along the edges of all the fantasy lands anyone had ever dreamed of. Oro turned in a slow circle, taking it all in as the others scattered with shrieks of glee. Rows of bookshelves stood here and there, not even beginning to detract from the illusion of space and freedom that permeated the room. It was, actually, just one large room, but it felt like thousands because there were all these hidden corners in it that you hadn't been expecting to come across. Light swirled in from semi-circle stained glass windows high above the shelves, so that the whole space was equally lit, with soft, half-golden light that echoed the color of archaic paper. The floor and the bookshelves were made of smooth, slightly glowing amber wood, but the walls were a light cream shade, with places to read somehow nestled against them everywhere. This was a place where you needed to read, where even the most terrible of books would seem wonderful just because it was a book.

Oro glanced at the contents of the shelves. All sorts of books were arranged there, seemingly without much sense (though he had a feeling, knowing this place, that they were going to be in the most attractive order possible), and a dusting of magic over all of them.

"I think maybe this is heaven," Oro announced to no one in particular, diving for the book nearest to him.

But, his companions being the people they were, rainswept obviously had to take him up on that. "Heaven," she said instructively, "is a place where there are no material things and only spiritual perfection, meaning that it cannot be found in a library where the whole point is material things."

It was there that I found them about an hour later, reading peacefully with banter flaring up here and there. It was a scene almost like a painting, with the light filtering in through the windows, and books taking up almost all the space, and people scattered through the room, reading. I must say I'm more inclined to agree with Oro on this one - libraries are something else. Especially this one.

"Hey, kids," I said. "No one's met the doctor yet?"

"The doctor?" Crescent asked, looking up. "I thought it was just you and Finior here."

"Well, the doctor doesn't really count as an inhabitant of the palace," I explained with a laugh, which was absolutely as far as I was going. They'd find out themselves at some point.

"By the way," Oro added, looking straight at me. "If there really is just Finior and you here - I mean, Lord Finior - why's the Lord third-in-command?"

"Customs of this place," I told him, though I could tell by his expression that he thought I'd answered too quickly. "That's by no means what's important right now, though. Ready for what comes next?"

Btw, all these top-o things are Lord Finior. If I ever went in for that kind of self-promotion, you'd know it was me because the location would say something like "Let's rock it to the top". I mean, some of us are actually cool.

Not that this is a reflection on Finior's character. Just an observation.

Day 1, Part 2

"I am," Hawkstar volunteered.

"How could I not be?" Rigel asked with a smile.

"Right," I said before everyone else could start adding their own opinions. "What comes next is a comprehensive tour of the palace -" I looked at them all. "Wait, you haven't gone all over yet, right?"

"Not quite," Kauri said cheerfully.

"Good. Then a comprehensive tour of the palace, and some explanation. If anyone wants to stay behind and be buried in books, no one's stopping you. So?" I'd never been a tour guide before, so this was probably going to be cool no matter what.

Everyone said they were coming - apparently being buried in books wasn't quite as appealing to Chatterbox people as I'd always thought - and I led them towards the far end of the library.

"Where are we going? There isn't any door there," Crescent said, evidently feeling that someone had to point this out.

"I know." I reached for one of the sections of the wooden wall and did little magic things to it, and it slid open the way it always did, revealing some of the gardens sloping away beyond it. My visitors were utterly won over, and I couldn't keep back a grin. Even I knew full well that there was something alluring about this palace, something that caught all your dreams and held them hostage until you weren't sure what was the dream and what was the palace.

I took them through the long palace gardens, glimmering in the light of the afternoon that inevitably got reflected and refracted by the roses and the tiny white flowers and even the grass; through part of the old palace, the remaining bits of an older fortress that the new palace was built off of; through the new palace itself, gleaming and sparkling and modern and perfect. Crescent recognized part of it from the video - there were the same bougainvilleas against skies that could not be that blue, the same pattern of marble and mosaics, and the same aura of calm and ocean and a shimmering world made of perfection.

As we went, I explained everything that they needed to know. There was a city nearby, called Sairelin, where I'd take them tomorrow, and which my family had always ruled. The palace was built by magic, founded on magic, maybe even just was magic, and this whole world was hovering a step and a jump from the borders of the Chatterbox's universe.

We were in the lofty dining hall of the old palace when it finally happened. Crescent was turning in a slow circle, drinking everything in, when a few musical notes shimmered on the air. No one had a phone out, and there definitely didn't seem to be any music-making device around.

She turned to me, startled. "What -"

I recognized the song and laughed. "Too charming for its own good."

I'm so glad you made the time to see me...

"Squee," Rigel said suddenly. "I think - but where's it coming from?"

"The palace," I informed her. "It likes to play music. Call it a built-in Spotify, or something. It's one of those quirks around this place."

"I love it," rainswept said, spinning around as Crescent had just been doing.

and I go

Back to December all the time

"Let's go, lizards," I said after a moment. "I left the best for last."

The best? Crescent thought. Everything so far had been so incredible, and it felt like they'd been all over the palace already. What the heck could be left?

Everyone was heading out of the hall and back to the new palace, the music courteously following them since Rigel didn't seem to want to leave mid-song. At least it was a polite palace, was what occurred to Crescent. But, seriously?? Palaces' manners hadn't been anything that concerned her yesterday. So much for yesterday. Life was for the present, after all.

We went down through the palace and finally crossed a garden, to a low, long marble building. Exquisitely built, of course, Crescent noted. There was an almost translucent quality to the marble, and there were carvings along the top of lithe mythical creatures forming complex patterns. I pushed open the doors, and we were inside.

A whinny floated out on the warm air. Inside, it was divided into three sections - two semi-walled-off passages to either side, and a corridor down the middle. The thought that flashed straight into Crescent's mind was Unicorns??? But the horses that she could glimpse weren't silver, they were brown and black and golden. She tumbled inside along with everyone else, and one of the horses reached out and bunted her playfully with its nose. She turned to face it, and -

"Guys, these things have horns!!!" Dragonfly exclaimed.

Crescent really took them in. The one that had reached out to her did have a spiralling horn between her ears, ebony black like the rest of her. This was an authentic unicorn. "What but I mean -" she tried. "These are unicorns??"

"This one's a Pegasus," said Rigel, who seemed to have fallen in love with a delicate little hazel-colored one.

"Whoa," rainswept said, reaching out to a massive gray unicorn.

"Whoa," Oro echoed. He looked vaugely uncertain, eyeing a majestic unicorn who didn't seem to have the same level of interest in him.

"Why whoa?" Dragonfly asked. "I mean, unicorns. Aren't you beautiful?" she asked one of them, who responded with a soft whinny.

"UM," Kauri said. "Are these things real?" Crescent glanced that way over the mane of her black unicorn; Kauri had always maintained that unicorns were simply not. But these unicorns so obviously were. "They aren't so bad," she said, keeping an arm around hers.

"If you don't like unicorns per se, check this out," Hawkstar volunteered raptly. "It's an alicorn."

If Kauri didn't like unicorns, I wasn't sure that alicorns were going to be much of a hit. "We actually have one other, um, real kind of thing here," I said. "I imagine no one will have to be told what this is?"

"...Not if it's a dragon," Hawkstar said, taking one glance at the slim, irridescent, powerful creature in the farthest stall.

"Which it is," I said brightly. "You can ride them tomorrow, but right now we're having supper and going to sleep."

Uproar.

In the end, though, everyone managed to tear themselves away from the assortment of creatures, and we had supper in the dining room with Lord Finior as dusk dropped over the palace. Later, as Crescent took one more look out her bedroom window and switched out the lights, she couldn't stop wondering - about what was waiting for them on the other side of the sunrise, and if they were really as safe as Kauri thought they were, and what on earth that conversation she'd overheard in the very beginning had been about.